China's Li Zhaoxing and Japan's Taro Aso will hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Kuala Lumpur, only their second such meeting in over a year, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

"The two sides will exchange opinions on Sino-Japanese relations and issues of common concern," the ministry said in a short statement, adding the meeting would be on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

The Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers last held bilateral talks in May in Doha on the sidelines of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue forum. The previous meeting at that level was in May 2005.

China has scaled back senior official encounters with Japan primarily over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which honors 14 World War II criminals among 2.5 million war dead.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has refused to meet Koizumi because of his shrine visits, and Li told Aso in Doha that the issue remained the key obstacle to improving relations.

China and South Korea, which were both invaded by Japan in the 20th century, consider the shrine a symbol of militarism.

Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have also been strained by a drawn-out dispute over lucrative gas and oil fields in the East China Sea.

Japan's foreign ministry on Monday confirmed the scheduled meeting between Aso and Li in Kuala Lumpur, and said one of the key issues on the agenda would be the ongoing North Korean missile and nuclear crisis.

"North Korea is definitely one of the major subjects they will discuss," a ministry official said in Tokyo.

North Korea's test-firing of ballistic missile tests on July 5 has been a cause of added friction between Japan and China.

Japan had urged UN Security Council members to support a binding resolution that would impose sanctions on the North for launching the missiles, but China strongly opposed it.

A watered-down version that dropped a reference to authorize sanctions or military action was finally passed unanimously on July 15.

However, China and Japan have both been pushing for Pyongyang to return to the stalled six-nation talks that are aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons drive.

The reclusive communist state has refused to return to the talks since November last year due to objections over US financial sanctions against it.

Japan and China agreed at security talks in Beijing last Friday that all nations involved in the North Korea talks should meet this week to plot a route back to negotiations, according to Japanese media reports.

Aside from China and Japan, the talks involve the two Koreas, the United States and Russia.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are also due to attend the ARF forum in Kuala Lumpur.

The ARF is a 12-year-old annual forum on security in the Asia-Pacific region that was initiated by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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